SEO Basics
What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quantity and quality of traffic (visitors) coming to your website through search engine results.
Search Engines --like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Yahoo or Bing-- are the most popular tools to find what they need on the internet based on keywords specified by users.
For a more in-depth look at SEO read this Beginner's Guide to SEO from Moz
Note: SEO strategy falls outside of the scope of Page Bird's services and support. Search engines are complex programs and they change continuously. Plus, everyone's marketing needs are unique. For these reasons, we do not provide specific SEO advice to our customers. See What Page Bird Does For SEO for more details.
The basics of improving your website's search rankings
Create valuable content and update it regularly.
While there are many things you can do to improve your site's rankings, nothing is more important than creating valuable content for your audience. Search engines continuously change their algorithms and prioritize different aspects of websites
- Identify your target audience
- Identify keywords: What are members of your target audience searching for?
- Add keywords to the content of your website
- Publish valuable content for your audience
- Update your content regularly
Improving your site's search rankings takes time
If your website does not show at the top of the results list page (ranking) when users search for what they need, don't worry. SEO is a complex process and search engines take time to index the information of your site.
Note: Although it takes time to improve your site's search rankings, it pays off in the long run and makes your paid campaigns more effective. Creating valuable content for your site's visitors is the best way to improve your SEO. Read our SEO Checklist to learn more about content best practices.
Site rankings change
If you see your site's search rankings falling right after optimizing your site, don't worry. It's normal to see variations in your ranking while search engines index the content of your website.
If your ranking hasn’t gone up after a week or two, check Analytics to see if there are site traffic trends that might explain the dip. For example, a change in how other websites link to your site can impact your visibility. You may also want to consider updating your keywords to target different search terms.
Stick to SEO best practices
Whether your improving your site's rankings on your own or hiring a digital marketing agency, everyone should strictly abide by Google’s publicly posted webmaster guidelines which specifically prohibit 12 common SEO tricks. Your website could be penalized with low search results rankings. Or, worse yet, Google can ban it from search results altogether.
Bing and Yahoo also post webmaster best practices that everyone should abide by, confirm that they do.